Exchange schedules in token economies: A preliminary investigation of second‐order schedule effects

Basic research shows that token‐production and exchange‐production schedules in token economies affect each other as second‐order schedules (i.e., the exchange‐production schedule's requirements affect responding toward the token‐production schedule). This relationship has not been investigated with children in academic settings despite the widespread use of token economies in this context. This study compared the effects of fixed‐ratio (FR) and variable‐ratio (VR) exchange‐production schedules of equal ratios (2, 5, and 10) on responding toward an FR 1 token‐production schedule with a child diagnosed with autism. A concurrent chains assessment was also conducted to assess the participant's relative preference for FR and VR exchange‐production schedule arrangements within her typical discrete trial training. Results showed no difference in response rate between the two schedule types. However, the concurrent chains assessment revealed an exclusive preference for the VR arrangement.     

Affective aprosodia from a medial frontal stroke

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Whereas injury to the left hemisphere induces aphasia, injury to the right hemisphere's perisylvian region induces an impairment of emotional speech prosody (affective aprosodia). Left-sided medial frontal lesions are associated with reduced verbal fluency with relatively intact comprehension and repetition (transcortical motor aphasia), but persistent affective prosodic defects associated with right medial frontal lesions have not been described. METHODS: We assessed the prosody of a man who sustained a right medial frontal cerebral infarction seven years prior. RESULTS: While propositional speech expression was normal including syntactic prosody, the patient was impaired at expressing emotions using prosody. His comprehension and repetition of prosody were also impaired but less so than expression. CONCLUSIONS: Right medial frontal lesions can induce an affective aprosodia that primarily impairs expression.     

The treatment of sexual dysfunction: Some theoretical considerations

Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy -     

Relationships between adult attachment representations and family ritual quality: a prospective, longitudinal study

Meaningful family rituals have been associated with positive outcomes for families and children. No studies, however, have investigated predictors of family ritual quality, the identification of which would be important for understanding why some families create and enact meaningful family rituals while others lack rituals or have problematic rituals. We propose that adult attachment security may be an important predictor of family ritual quality because family rituals may provide a sense of stability and cohesiveness for the family. The purpose of this study was to examine relationships between adult attachment representations and the quality of family rituals, using a prospective, longitudinal design. Prior to the birth of their first child, 125 couples completed the Adult Attachment Interview, and a subsample of 70 mothers and 62 fathers completed the Family Rituals Questionnaire when their first child was 7 years old. Different patterns of relationships between attachment representations and family rituals were found for mothers and fathers. Maternal Insecure Attachment was associated with higher routinization of family rituals. Being in a couple with mixed attachment classifications (e.g., one Secure partner and one Insecure partner) was related to a pattern of low routinization and low meaning for family rituals. The results of this study are interpreted in terms of two patterns of rituals that have been described by clinicians--rigid ritualization and underritualization, and suggestions for working with these ritual patterns in families with Insecure attachment are provided.     

Reliability analysis of observational data: Problems,solutions, and software implementation

In the reliability analysis literature, little attention has been given to the various possible ways of creating a basis for the comparison required to compute observer agreement. One needs this comparison to turn a sequential list of behavioral records into a confusion matrix. It is shown that the way to do this depends on the research question one needs to answer. Four methods for creating a basis for comparison for the computation of observer agreement in observational data are presented. Guidelines are given for computing observer agreement in a way that fits one’s goals. Finally, we discuss how these methods have been implemented in The Observer software. The Observer 4.1 supports all the methods that have been discussed. Most of these methods are not present in any other software package.     

Hypatia's silence

Hartry Field distinguished two concepts of type‐free truth: scientific truth and disquotational truth. We argue that scientific type‐free truth cannot do justificatory work in the foundations of mathematics. We also present an argument, based on Crispin Wright's theory of cognitive projects and entitlement, that disquotational truth can do justificatory work in the foundations of mathematics. The price to pay for this is that the concept of disquotational truth requires non‐classical logical treatment.     

Procrastination Revisited: A Commentary

This commentary connects two studies of academic procrastination, Beswick, Rothblum and Mann (1988), which studied the antecedents of academic procrastination, and Steel (2016), which focuses on the personality correlates of academic procrastination. The author identifies reasons for growth in the field of procrastination research, discusses definitions of procrastination, and then comments on the two studies of academic procrastination identified above. In assessing current status and future directions in the field of procrastination research, the author discusses the relationship between and measurement of behavioural and decisional procrastination, the domain specificity or domain generality of procrastination, and the need for the field to move beyond studies of academic procrastination into other domains such as illness and health where procrastination is a major problem, then ends with a comment on cross‐cultural differences in procrastination and a summary conclusion about the field.     

Children’s Influence on Their Parent’s Adult Development: Mothers’ and Fathers’ Receptivity to Children’s Requests for Change

This mixed-method study examined parents’ experiences of their children’s influence on parent’s continuing adult development. Mothers and fathers from 30 families were separately interviewed regarding two of their children who were between 8 and 14 years old. Parents reported on recent events when their younger and older child successfully requested that parents change their preferences, attitudes, and personal behaviors. Mothers reported more direct child influence than fathers, and both parents reported that they were more receptive to influence from their older children. Thematic analyses revealed that parents were generally comfortable with child influence and constructed their children as actors and agents. Parents attributed their receptivity to agentic qualities of children’s requests, goals for empowering children, and maintaining their mutual relationship. The findings provided insight into the transactional and relational nature of children’s influence and the direct and indirect impact of children on the adult development of parents.